A miscapped, leaking bottle in a bottling production line, if undetected, potentially causes a great deal more damage than the loss of one bottle of product. It slows production and requires additional labor to clean up the spill. Further, the spilled product can damage cardboard cartons or palletized units, thus causing the loss of additional units. The danger becomes even more serious if hazardous materials are contained in the bottle.
In most capping operations, machine operators attempt to identify miscapped bottles merely by sight. Due to repetitious work and fatigue, improperly capped bottles are often missed. One attempt to solve this problem has been to provide automatic cap detectors, such as the Fail-Safe.TM. FSD 8700 detector and the Missing Cap-High Cap Detection Fail Safe.TM., both manufactured by Culbro Corporation of Kingston, Pa.
These prior systems detect a missing band from around the cap of the bottle. Fiber optic sensors detect the presence of a bottle at the sensing station and UV sensors detect the presence or absence of an ultraviolet treated shrink band or graphic sleeve material around the bottle cap. The bottles are transported through the detector system on a conventional conveyor belt. Bottles that are missing bands are removed through an ejection unit, which utilizes an air cylinder mechanism to redirect the bottles.
One difficulty with the above detectors is that the fiber optic sensors are easily damaged or rendered inoperable due to a build-up of dirt and the like. Further, because the ejection unit redirects the bottles from the wider lower portion of the bottle, the air cylinder operates through along stroke. Thus, the system slows while the failed bottle is removed. An additional difficulty arises because the product is pushed off the line at a 90 degree angle. Thus, a high percentage of product is unrecoverable, resulting in serious product loss.